13 June 2019

Sascha Giese, head geek, SolarWinds

The IT pro community is tasked with knowing which technologies will fit within the existing IT stack, which ones warrant the biggest investments, and which ones best support their organisations’ long-term transformation goals.

In fact, the IT pro’s role is not too dissimilar from a Premier League football manager selecting new players for their team.

IT pros are frequently inundated with claims of the most cost-effective and efficient solutions and, like football managers, they need to decide which players – or technologies – to put forward in order to keep their defence in tack, and better yet, find someone to score a goal.

So, which technologies should today’s IT pros consider having in their all-star team?

The van Dijk of security

When it comes to technology adoption, IT pros need to ahead of the challengers, such as hackers.

A solution that is able to monitor its network and identify the exact point where an issue will take place, which could be likened to an attempt at goal.

It’s vital that they’re in the right place at the right time to stop opponents from entering unmarked territory.

This is where, for IT pros, patching could come in.

Over the last couple of years, large-scale, global attacks such as WannaCry pointed to the need for something as simple as a routine patch test.

IT pros need to become more mindful of the consequences of not rolling out tests regularly.

Sure, patches are thought of as a protective measure – like van Dijk playing defence for Liverpool.

But what businesses need to realise is that if they aren’t installed and rolled out frequently, this can be the same as having your star player out for a whole season.

And as a result, your opponent can see your vulnerabilities and exploit them to knock your team off the top spot.

The speed of Mbappé

In technology and football, speed is everything.

The significance of a couple of seconds can be the difference between Kylian Mbappé outrunning his opponent, or even the long-awaited potential speed of a 5G network.

With the promise of speeds 20 times faster than 4G, it’s not difficult to see the appeal to an IT pro.

But to take advantage of all that 5G will have to offer, telecommunication companies will need to increase their infrastructure investments.

Operators will have to enhance their 4G networks to cope with the growing demand in the coming years.

This will ensure that when 5G is up and running, the quality of the service doesn’t take a nosedive when moving between networks.

A football manager cannot rely on Mbappé speed to sail them through, it will be the support from around him that will get the team that win.

The agility of Hazard

In today’s IT space, as more businesses move towards the cloud, they need to have a solution that has the agility and flexibility to support its new, and extremely fast paced environment.

A technology that can react quickly to a spike in user activity, and maintain its performance.

A solution that could resemble the likes of Eden Hazard, who can dribble his way through many opponents to score the winning goal in the most challenging competitions.

Using containers can decrease the time needed for development and deployment of applications and services.

Containers are a very cost-effective solution.

They can potentially help IT pros to decrease operating and development costs.

Nevertheless, one of the main disadvantages of container-based virtualisation compared to traditional virtual machine is security.

Containers share the kernel, other components of the host operating system, and they have root access.

This means that containers are less isolated from each other than virtual machines, and if there is a vulnerability in the kernel it can jeopardize the security of the other containers as well.

This can mean that when Hazard is injured, the whole team could be affected.

The leadership of Kane

IT pros, like all great teams, need a captain that they can rely on – one with the ability to be in touch with all its networks far and wide.

Ensuring maximum performance, Software-Defined Networking in a Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is a specific application of SDN technology applied to WAN connections such as broadband internet, 4G, LTE, or Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS).

It connects enterprise networks – including data centres and branch offices – over large geographic distances.

Like Harry Kane, SD-WAN unites disparate elements to make sure the team delivers.

SD-WAN adoption lets IT pros deploy internet-based connectivity easily, quickly, reliably, and securely.

This is an all-round player that can result in ubiquity, increased bandwidth, reduced costs and improved application performance.

This is a player that IT pros are likely to want in their back pocket.

The best of the best

When making any vital decision for a digital transformation strategy, IT pros need to ask themselves all the questions that can assist in coming to important choices.

While all technologies have star qualities, they’re not fit for every business.

Depending on your organisation, the challenges and the solutions to fix them are out there – they just need a manager to spot their talent.